Poe and African American Literature and Culture. American Literature Association Conference, Boston May 26-29, 2011.

Poe and African American Literature and Culture. American Literature Association Conference, Boston May 26-29, 2011. Organized by the Poe Studies Association.

Papers might revisit/reconsider Poe's position on slavery and/or Toni Morrison's reading of Poe in connection with American Africanism. Other possibilities include African American tributes to Poe (e.g. T. Thomas Fortune's sonnet about "the wizard of the Orphic lyre"), African American texts that specifically mention/strategically use Poe (e.g. Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man), African American texts that counter-discursively respond to/signify on writings by Poe (e.g. Pauline Hopkins's "Talma Gordon" vis-à-vis "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" and "The Gold-Bug"), African American texts that evoke Poe's texts in uncanny ways (e.g. Linda Brent's description of the "loophole of retreat" as a "living grave" in Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl), and any other African American (re)considerations or reworkings of Poe.

250-word abstracts and brief bios to John Gruesser at jgruesse@kean.edu by December 31, 2010.